Friday, September 07, 2012

Popular social networking site Reddit appeals to people who think they are different.
Unlike the big social networking sites like MySpace (RIP), FaceBook, Digg, Fark, etc. the smaller Reddit prides itself on being a place for individualists... who all happen to have social anxiety, broken families, dodgy personal habits, self-hating outlooks and left-wing views. But they're all individualists.
The site is proudly liberal, endorsing its politics forum which is exclusively leftism, atheism, gaming, comic books and pornography. Its hostility to right-wing views extends even to mainstream conservatism, but really ramps up for anything to the right of Bill Clinton.
Undaunted, a group of right-wing users decided to make it a home and established a number of right wing forums, or "sub-Reddits," especially /r/new_right, /r/SocialConservative, /r/tea_party, /r/conservatives, /r/paleoconservative and /r/nationalism.
At first, the pushback was rather intense and the native culture, which loathes anything that does not loathe itself and is proud of its origins, heaped impotent "down votes" upon the right-wingers and hurled analogues for airborne simian feces at the newcomers. However, the right-wingers held their ground.
Today each of these forums is thriving and gaining in audience while the teeth-gnashing, embittered, resentful and burnt-out leftists are finding that the community is not the uniform conformist "different" leftist hivemind groupthink echo chamber they had hoped for.
As usual, conservatives create while leftists destroy, and then justify it with the perception of universal agreement, which they use as an excuse to crowd out conservative views or take vengeful action against conservatives. But on Reddit, as elsewhere, these leftist destroyers are increasingly thwarted.